Posted on 22 July 2013

Google today launched a number of updates to Cloud Print that finally bring it to Windows and make it easier to share printers with others.

Even Google knows that there are still some occasions when you just need to print something, so for the last few years, the company has been steadily improving this service. At its core, Cloud Print allows you to share your printers with others and print virtually anything from anywhere.

There are plenty of “cloud-ready” printers on the market, which you can connect to the Internet and manage from your Google Cloud Print accounts. Until now, however, Google only supported Cloud Print in Chrome on Chrome OS. There are also some third-party tools for OS X and Windows, but until today Google itself didn’t really offer any support for third-party operating systems.

Today’s launch of the Cloud Print Service for Windows allows admins to easily connect their existing printers in their schools and businesses. The service runs in the background and connects your printers to Google’s cloud. It’s officially in beta, requires that Chrome is installed and is compatible with Windows 7, Vista and XP with the Windows XPS Essentials Pack installed (but then, you really shouldn’t run XP on your computers anymore…).

The other tool Google is launching today is Google Cloud Printer for Windows, which is essentially a printer driver for Windows that lets you use Cloud Print just like any other printer that’s installed on your computer. With this, you can print to Cloud Print from any application on your computer.

With today’s update, Google also now makes it easier to share printers with anybody nearby by simply providing them with a link. You can manage access this way and also set limits for how many pages a given user can print per day (something schools will surely appreciate).

Posted on 18 April 2012

The amount of harried printing situations I’ve been party to has dropped dramatically since I finished school, but Google’s new update to their Cloud Print service should have you covered if you can’t say the same.

According to a post on the official Chrome blog Google has baked the ability to print to any FedEx Office location right into Cloud Print, so you’ll be push your documents from Chrome, Google Docs, or your Android device to a participating store and pick up it whenever you need to.

When I took the service for a spin, the process of actually creating the job took a shade under 30 seconds seconds — from there, I was greeted with an email mentioning that my document was now ready to print at a local FedEx Office. As long as you’ve remember to keep the retrieval code from the email handy, you’re all set to pick up your sales report (or printed copy of Charge of the Like Brigade) when you need to.

It isn’t a dealbreaker if you can’t get down there immediately though, as the document will continue to live in the cloud for ten days. After that, you’re plumb out of luck (unless you pop into Chrome and Cloud Print it again). I imagine that not everyone will be too pleased with this development — companies like Breezy have working to remove the friction from mobile printing for quite a while, and now they’ve got other competitor to deal with.

Strangely enough, Google also announced that Cloud Print can now send documents to Ice Cream Sandwich-powered devices that have the Chrome for Android beta installed. It doesn’t strike me as a huge improvement over, say, just sticking it in Google Docs, but it’ll do in a pinch if you’re ever in need of a slightly-clunkier version of Instapaper.

Posted on 24 January 2011

One of the more interesting things Google is working on that doesn’t get a lot of buzz is Cloud Print. The service aims to allow you to print anything from anywhere over the cloud. It’s a technology that is perfect for Chrome OS, which is trying to remove drivers from the equation. And it’s arguably more perfect for mobile devices. Today, Google is beginning to test Cloud Print for mobile.

As they outline on their mobile blog, today is the beta launch of Cloud Print for mobile documents and Gmail for mobile. As they note, “Imagine printing an important document from your smartphone on the way to work and finding the printout waiting for you when you walk in the door. Just open a document in Google Docs or an email in Gmail in your mobile browser and choose ‘Print’ from the dropdown menu in the top right corner.“

That does sound awesome. And it’s really awesome that it works over Google’s websites rather than a native application (though it’s currently only enabled on Android 2.1+ and iOS 3+ devices). But there’s still one problem with this perfect ecosystem. The printer itself still has to be hooked up to and set up with a computer. And not just any computer, it has to be a Windows-based PC.

Google continues to promise that Mac and Linux support is coming. But even better would be printers with Cloud Print built in — just like Apple is beginning to do with Air Print.

Posted on 07 December 2010

It’s now just about time for the Chrome event Google is holding in San Francisco, presumably to show off both the new Chrome Web Store and the beta version of Chrome OS. We’ll be there to cover it live, but here are a few last-minute tidbits.

First, as Google Operating System noticed, Google uploaded two new videos to the YouTube Google Chrome channel earlier today. While neither video is live, the thumbnails are and confirm that one is about Chrome OS (a tour) and one is about the Chrome Web Store.

Second, some users are reporting seeing an alert in their versions of Chrome that asks them if they want to “test drive” a new Chrome OS notebook.

Third, it looks like there will be at least two games installed by default with Chrome OS:

Posted on 07 December 2010

Back in April, we wrote about a very cool new feature that Google was working on alongside Chrome OS: Cloud Print. Essentially, it’s a service that takes all of the printer drivers you normally need on a computer and puts them in the cloud (on Google’s servers). This way, you can easily print from a machine regardless of the OS. This means you can print from Chrome OS or from any mobile device. And it appears that it’s now just about ready to roll out.

As you can see here, there’s already a live landing page for Google Cloud Print. From this page, you can print a test page. This shouldn’t be too surprising given that Google is believed to be unveiling a beta version of Chrome OS at an event in San Francisco later today.

But one caveat on the beta is that is says you currently need Windows 7, Vista, or XP to use it. It says that Mac and Linux support is coming soon. This doesn’t seem to have much to do with the user end, but rather the printer end. Currently, you need to have a Windows PC connected to a printer to set it up, it seems.

Earlier reports said the feature would require Chrome 9 as well (the dev build of Chrome is currently version 9). And it is slated to be a Chrome 9 feature. But as of five days ago, the feature was being passed through the Chrome marketing team for final approval. One possibility seems to be that Chrome OS will launch with stable, beta, and dev channels just like Chrome, and this Cloud Print feature could be enabled on the dev (and possibly beta) channels as that will likely run Chrome 9 instead of Chrome 8 (yes, inside of Chrome OS itself).

WebSonic.nl has some screenshots of the feature actually working on a Windows machine. The ones in this post are from my Mac machine.